Apple Will Let Publishers Use Their Own Ad Tech; CMOs Are Set Up For Failure

Apple will let publishers use their own ad tech to monetize stories on Apple News. It becomes the latest walled garden to acknowledge media companies’ growing need to control ad serving and tracking in all distribution channels. “They've now seen the light," a top publishing exec told Ad Age anonymously. "Apple is acknowledging it can't force its ad technology into the marketplace and it makes more sense to allow standard ad serving." Apple News reaches 47 million monthly users. More.

The Marketer Minefield

A trio of marketing professors sees “evidence that something is going very wrong in the relationship between CEOs and CMOs.” Writing in the Harvard Business Review, they cite a Fournaise Marketing Group survey of CEOs, in which CFOs and CIOs rank far ahead of their marketing counterparts in trust and responsibility. The professors argue that the CMO position is too often ill-defined and pegged to outdated performance goals. “Any company can make a bad hire, but when responsibilities, expectations and performance measures are not aligned and realistic, it sets a CMO up to fail.” More at the Harvard Business Review.

SCOTUS Takes Notice

In October, the Supreme Court will hear Carpenter v. United States, a case brought by a man convicted of robbery charges based on smartphone location data pulled from a mobile carrier without a warrant. The government holds that the third-party doctrine, which maintains personal data volunteered to a third party (here, the mobile carrier), makes carrier data clear of unreasonable search and seizure standards, reports Kate Kaye for MarTech Today. Carpenter’s representation, including ACLU attorneys, say, “Only this Court can provide the guidance they [lower courts] seek about whether and how a doctrine developed long before the digital age applies to the voluminous and sensitive digital records at issue here.” The ruling will impact law enforcement directly and marketers only hypothetically, but it will present an early sign of how the top US court may approach consumer-related tracking. More.

Under The Influence

Sarah Peretz has been trying to make a go of it as a Snapchat influencer for the past year, but is leaving the platform due to its indifference to would-be sponsored content creators. YouTube and Instagram offer their creators extensive services around production, distribution, product development and analytics for sponsored content. “Since leaving Snapchat, Peretz is getting a warm embrace from Instagram, which scheduled a meeting with her to solicit her feedback on the platform,” Digiday reports. On Snapchat, third-party vendors can extract some data on influencer campaigns, but those campaigns languish in a policy gray zone that could theoretically be shut down by the platform [AdExchanger coverage].